Bright House boosting backbone to 100G

Bright House Networks is preparing to accelerate transmission rates on its metro networks to 100G, relying on equipment from long-time supplier Fujitsu.

Bright House will upgrade to the Fujitsu Flashwave 9500 Packet Optical Networking Platform (Packet ONP) to expand its network capacity, improve spectral efficiency and lower the cost per bit of optical transport by capitalizing on the platform’s ability to deliver 100G-per-second bandwidth on each of 88 channels.

This version of Fujitsu’s Packet ONP features what the vendor is calling soft decision FEC (forward error correction), an encoding algorithm that Fujitsu said enables longer distances and fewer regenerations on 100G optical networks.

Fujitsu will provide Bright House with engineering, furnish, installation and network testing services. The MSO is also using Fujitsu’s Netsmart 2000 network planning and design software, along with the Netsmart 1500 network management application.

“Our partnership with Fujitsu allows us to provide approximately 2.5 million business and residential customers across five states the latest in communications performance, dependability and value-added services,” said Craig Cowden, senior vice president of NEO and enterprise solutions at Bright House Networks.